Corbett First Pennsylvania Governor to Lose Reelection

Busi­ness­man Tom Wolf (D) “was elec­ted gov­ernor Tues­day in his first cam­paign for polit­ic­al of­fice.” Gov. Tom Corbett (R) “be­came the first gov­ernor to lose a bid for reelec­tion in the state’s mod­ern his­tory.” (Phil­adelphia In­quirer)

Corbett’s loss can mostly be traced back to when “[i]n Janu­ary 2011, with the ef­fects of the re­ces­sion linger­ing, the new Pennsylvania gov­ernor needed to find bil­lions of dol­lars in his first budget. He had prom­ised not to raise taxes, though. So he cut.”

“State fund­ing for pub­lic edu­ca­tion took a $1 bil­lion whack, amid the ex­pir­a­tion of fed­er­al stim­u­lus money. That may have sealed … Corbett’s fate, ac­cord­ing to polit­ic­al ana­lysts sift­ing the wreck­age of the Re­pub­lic­an’s his­tor­ic loss.” (Phil­adelphia In­quirer)

SAN­DUSKY SHAD­OW. Corbett also suffered from long-held protest votes cast against him from those still un­happy with his hand­ling of the in­vest­ig­a­tion in­to former Penn State as­sist­ant foot­ball coach Jerry San­dusky. “Throughout the day, mem­bers of a group called Penn Staters for Re­spons­ible Stew­ard­ship donned PSU gear and went to the polls to vote against … Corbett. They did this not be­cause they ne­ces­sar­ily liked Tom Wolf any bet­ter - but out of protest.” (Phil­adelphia In­quirer)